Kaspar Schiltknecht – Bonne Espérance

The routine life of Stéphanie, a support worker, ill at ease with herself, but totally dedicated to her work, is overturned by her experience with Tamara, a “white trash Lolita” who is at war with the entire world.

Diploma project (2013) by Kaspar Schiltknecht

Know-how: Fiction

Fiction / 19min

Synopsis

A support worker in a hostel for young women at risk, Stéphanie’s whole life revolves round her work. Her commitment is shaken when Tamara, a 16 year old runaway, is brought back by the police. Trying to deal with the institution’s tight surveillance and hostility of the other girls, Tamara tries to make friends with Stéphanie, who becomes increasingly unsettled by the girl’s desire for closeness.

Commentaire

Bonne Espérance tells with intelligence and finesse the story of the meeting of two women that everything should have opposed. Kaspar Schiltknecht succeeds, with gentleness and grace, in filming the ages, the states of the body, the desires for freedom and guilt, the beauty and the unattractive, and reveals a young actress with a confounding naturalness who seduces her educator almost in spite of herself.

Frédéric Mermoud / Director

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